bummertown, population: me

It has been a really disappointing day. The last thing I want to do tonight is read blogs or twitter posts, or inspiring, uplifting quotes about how when life gets tough you just have to work harder and smile brighter and things will be better.

Because the truth is sometimes things are completely out of your control. And sitting and waiting for them to work themselves out can be excruciating.

So tonight I want to sit around, watch “Glee”, eat chocolate, and maybe entertain a small pity party.

I’m so frustrated that this cycle was basically a huge waste of time. And now I’ve signed up for at least another month of sitting around waiting and feeling helpless, with no guarantee anything will be different at the end of that month. It hurts. And it’s becoming clear that there is no quick fix for this situation and we might be looking at a much longer path than I thought.

So here’s a list of things to be thankful for this shitty experience:

• During the ultrasound, the tech said “I don’t think we got the right dosage of clomid”. Thus, taking responsibility for this wasted cycle (on behalf of the doctor’s office) and being tactful enough not to say or imply something was wrong with me or my body.
• I won’t be hugely pregnant on our cruise.
• The ultrasound tech sat and talked to me and answered all my questions.
• I did get a good laugh when she told us to have sex every 36 hours for the next 20 days, “just in case”. Who in the hell has time for that, I ask you?
• I have a sweet supportive husband who went with me to my appointment and helped me bear the bad news, even if it is exhausting to watch someone trying to cheer you up with so much determination.

TODAY, TODAY, TODAY

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow is no longer creeping at a petty pace because my ultrasound has been moved to TODAY at 3:30. Momentary freakout there when the voicemail said that they could schedule me for Monday – AWESOME, what good is a day 16 ultrasound going to do for me, dumbass? She swore up and down that the ultrasound on day 11 will be just as useful as the ultrasound on day 12, so let’s hope she’s right.

Now I’ll proceed to be a bundle of nerves for the next two hours. I’m so keyed up I could cry at the drop of a hat.

Please follicles, do the right thing, grow grow grow!

petty pace

I thought about posting today because I’m all hyped up about my appointment tomorrow. This week has all sorts of stuff going on but I seem incapable of thinking of any of them besides 3:30 on Thursday. So all I could think to write here was “tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow”, and that made me remember this excerpt from Macbeth that we had to memorize my junior year of high school

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Really this doesn’t apply to my life at all, except the first two lines really resonate with me. “Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” indeed.

Now.

I am having a hard time today. After the news yesterday (basically that the doctor’s office is considering these three cycles a “trial an error” time for my clomid dosage, while Andy and I were considering them PLEASE LET’S TRY TO GET PREGNANT THE NORMAL WAY [yes, in all caps like that]) I just feel bad. I don’t like the feeling that a nurse/doctor combo is in charge of directing my (unproductive) childbearing attempts, especially when I don’t trust the nurse/doctor combo (and it's Nurse Useless in charge of the show).

I feel completely out of the loop – like this is between my doctor and my ovaries and I don’t get a vote or get to be clued in. No one at that office cares about my feelings, or the fact that I find it impossible now to lead a normal life and think of normal things without the neverending blaring of the infertility album (featuring the tracks “it’s never going to happen” “you’re not like other people” and “you’ve only just begun this horrible journey”) playing in my head. The hard truth is that my doctor is in the business of helping pregnant women have babies, not helping infertile women get pregnant with them.

And the more discouraged I get the more the world seems to be divided into “us” and them. “Us” being me and the other infertiles whose blogs I read, and “them” meaning everyone else around me who has babies with ease and without 100 frustrating phone conversations with Nurse Useless before the conception part even happens. The truth is I’ve barely started treatment and I’ve already spent longer trying to get pregnant than I will spend being pregnant. And who knows how long the road is ahead of me.

I know there are bright sides. I know there’s still a chance this cycle will work. And even if it doesn’t, I know there’s a chance future cycles will, or that IUI will. And even if we do have to do IVF, I feel incredibly fortunate to live in Illinois where it’s a mandated coverage and instead of paying $10,000 for a cycle I will only have to pay $1,000. I know that being negative isn’t going to help my chances any, and that worrying is a pointless use of energy. But damnit, I’m tired of everyone else making all the decisions and I want to be pregnant now. Is that too much to ask?

Oh for the love of God

File today under “Nurse Useless pisses me off”. That file is getting quite thick.

Basically, to them, it's a practice cycle. Would have been nice to know that.

Here’s to hoping this cycle is going to be something remotely resembling “productive”. If I don’t ovulate I’ll just consider it more of the usual – read: Giant Waste of Time.

How’s that for a positive attitude? : D

CD1

Well it looks like my body is just as eager as I am to get this cycle going…and I guess I’m summoning my inner overachiever here. I started my period before I even took my last provera. So welcome to CD 1 ladies and gentelmen.

That means I start clomid on Thursday and will go in either next Thursday or Friday for my ultrasound.

I realized today that I don’t have any pregnancy tests in the house, and I think I’d like to keep it that way. No use buying them until at least a few days post-ovulation. I know if I have them I’ll just freak out and take one way too early.

So, dear uterus, since you have been so cooperative already, I will reward you by a long afternoon of curling up in bed and watching Glee!

my stupid mouth

Every since I posted about gut feelings I have been feeling like a huge moron. How DUMB do I have to be to tempt fate that way?

Even though I was truly feeling all of those positive things at the time, the moment I immortalized them in writing I realized that doing so was just making the moment two months, six months, a year from now when we’re still not pregnant even more painful. Now, if we end up needing IUI or IVF, we not only need ART, but we need ART and I was naïve enough to think we wouldn’t.

Hindsight has that painful tinge to it when you had no idea how bad things were going to be. The sweetly romantic month we spent thinking that my cycle would be like normal when I first went off the pill …I look at those versions of us and see silly little children who have yet to grow up and learn what the world is about. I truly hope I won’t think that about the current version of me.

Come on clomid, please work. I’m counting on you.

I always knew I had a gut

Ladies and gentlemen! Today is the day you’ve all been waiting for!

That’s right, I started provera today. I was going to wait until Friday but the two extra days just ended up being too much for me. Yes, I’m that pathetic. Now I’m just wishing I didn’t have to take the five pills one at a time. Can’t I just cram them all down my gullet at once and start a Mega Period like, tomorrow?

I have been obsessed with infertility blogs of late. The best are when I can tell by the landing page that the writer is a mom. Then I navigate the archives to 2006 or so and start at the beginning. It’s fascinating reading.

So I guess now would be a good time to record my gut feelings about this journey so a year from now I can either exclaim over how succinctly I predicted everything or despair over how naive I was.

1) My gut feeling is that we will get pregnant without IVF. That I just need a little help ovulating and will get pregnant with clomid/timed intercourse or at the most clomid/IUI.

2) My gut feeling is that we’ll get pregnant the first month.

3) My gut feeling is that I won’t have any miscarriages.

4) My gut feeling is that it will be twins.

Of course, sometimes a “gut feeling” is indistinguishable from “wanting it so bad it hurts”. The incredible thing is that I’m not a very optimistic person but all of these premonitions are overwhelmingly positive. Maybe I’ll be wrong on all accounts and I’ll learn that my gut isn’t worth shit.

Although I did have a gut feeling that I’d be infertile.

Here’s to hoping~

This seriously happened

contract drawn up in the kitchen tonight while preparing dinner, regarding future babies who may or may not be conceived per this union:

a) future babies will not be sent to any form of church/sunday school*

b) future babies will not be baptized until they’re old enough to decide if they want to be baptized.

c) future babies’ circumcisions will be ultimately decided by Daddy Lulu, but that doesn’t mean Mommy Lulu doesn’t get to give her opinion multiple times.

d) future babies will watch TV and eat candy, in moderation. we will not be “those parents” or “those parents”.

e) future babies in utero are not subject to abortion for any sort of birth defect or developmental disability, if the option arises.

f) if there are two future babies at a time and they are twins, we will not be conned into making the nursery a Noah’s ark “two by two” theme.

g) if there are two future babies at a time and they are twins, we can dress them in the same clothes, but they must be different colors otherwise we’re afraid we won’t be able to tell them apart.

*send me hate mail if you want. 

Double the fun

Lately I have realized that in all the daydreaming I do (and trust me, there’s a lot of it) about finding out I’m pregnant, telling our friends and family, announcing it on facebook, picking out baby things, having a shower, etc…it’s always twins. Without exception, my mind is preparing for twins.

Maybe this is some sort of (future) mother’s intuition. Just like I had a gut feeling that we had problems getting pregnant, maybe I have a gut feeling that we’ll get doubly pregnant our first time.

Maybe I’m just preparing my mind for the expense, tough pregnancy, and extra sleepless nights that come with twins, so that if it does end up happening I won’t panic and will feel prepared.

Maybe I’m a crazy person who wants twins. Maybe after spending so long wanting a baby and not having one, I would be thrilled to make up for lost time by having two at once. Twice as much work, sure, but twice as much love.

Maybe I’ll actually be sincerely disappointed if we don’t get pregnant with twins! How crazy would that be?

I don’t know if things will change in the next few weeks before I can take a pregnancy test, but right now I can clearly imagine being pregnant with two babies, but I just can’t see myself pregnant with one.

One week

One week one week one week.

One week from today I start the drugs that will (hopefully) eventually get me pregnant. If we had stuck with the original plan I’d be on clomid by now, but I really wanted to go on that cruise, darnit!

So by my crude calculations, starting provera next Friday, the most pregnant I can possibly be on March 7 is about 21 weeks. Plenty of room for the 24 week cut off imposed by Carnival.

I am trying not to get too excited. I have learned over the past nine months that it’s lethal to get your hopes up too high. But I do have some nervous/excited energy, and the thing I’m thinking about most is that if we get pregnant in late September/early October, we can tell our families on Thanksgiving. : )